Found Silver Ring on 1st Outing with 3.5"x18" Coil

[StvS]

I received the Tesoro umax 3.5" x 18" coil in the mail this week and took it out on an Eldorado today - just down the street to a "new" soccer field that was created in 2003. After 30 mins of productively detecting a 3' band around the sidelines (with such a wide head I could cover lots of ground fast), at mid-field I got a clear beep from one direction, and a broken beep from another. I had Discrimination set just above Foil, so when I thumbed the Disc knob on the clear beep direction it stayed clear to the high end of the dial, so I dug. It turns out, the ring was 3" down setting at a 45 degree angle to the surface. I'm impressed with the coil's ability to pick up such light wire (see picture, dime is for scale). Then again, I'm just started MDing after this last Thanksgiving, so maybe I'm still easily impressed. Anyway, I had fun figuring this "odd" signal out and am glad I took others' advice to "dig if in doubt"!

 

[slingshot]

Nice find. Mike Hillis, a frequent user of this coil, calls it the "cruiser". So, can you just WALK with it instead of swinging it since it's so long?

 

[StvS]

Thanks Slingshot, between the fast recovery time (hence fast sweep speed) and width of the coil, I'm guessing I do about a one-foot-length stride every 2 seconds when I overlap sweeps, every 1 second if I don't (figuring it may be less critical since this is a widescan coil and the park is so new, so targets are pretty shallow). Then I stop and resweep when I get a blip with Disc set just above Foil. Pnipoint off the far tip is accurate and easy.

 

[tvr]

So, can you just WALK with it instead of swinging ...

Along sidewalks, I frequently do just that. Turn it perpendicular to the sidewalk and just walk down the sidewalk with the coil over the adjacent grass.

 

[slingshot]

So, can you just WALK with it instead of swinging ...

Along sidewalks, I frequently do just that. Turn it perpendicular to the sidewalk and just walk down the sidewalk with the coil over the adjacent grass.

Yeah. I've done that a lot with the 8" coil, only I make 3 passes perpendicular to the length of the sidewalk. After that, I kinda lose perception of the sweep path and go back to regular sweeping. I was thinking that since the length of the coil was so long, you could keep doing that the full length of the search area, since a couple of inches off wouldn't matter that much.

 

[StvS]

I was out at a park detecting for about an hour and a half this morning. I first tried the CSC on some sand volleyball courts that I subsequently learned were used infrequently. From the spots of disturbed sand where I think another MDer had given up going after deep targets, I'm gathering that most of the shallow targets were found so there were few coins to be had.

So I switched to using the technique that tvr and slingshot had mentioned above (hold coil to side and walk parallel to sidewalk, with coil head perpendicular to sidewalk, thus with the CSC covering an 18" wide swatch alongside sidewalks) and after 20 minutes of finding a few coins, found a men's ring (not sure if its silver or silver plated) around the edge of a concrete pad under a picnic table. Also found numerous underground sprinkler heads at regular spacings I learned to ignore. In addition, I was occassionally fooled by rebar, especially where the grass had not been edged and had grown over the concrete. All my finds were within 6" of the sidewalk, so the technique should be effective with smaller round heads too, though DD/Widescan may work better since rebar in the sidewalk to the side of a concentirc coil may trigger the MD.

 

[digginLa]

nice ring, glad your liking the new coil. Jimmie

 

[slingshot]

I was out at a park detecting for about an hour and a half this morning. I first tried the CSC on some sand volleyball courts that I subsequently learned were used infrequently. From the spots of disturbed sand where I think another MDer had given up going after deep targets, I'm gathering that most of the shallow targets were found so there were few coins to be had.

So I switched to using the technique that tvr and slingshot had mentioned above (hold coil to side and walk parallel to sidewalk, with coil head perpendicular to sidewalk, thus with the CSC covering an 18" wide swatch alongside sidewalks) and after 20 minutes of finding a few coins, found a men's ring (not sure if its silver or silver plated) around the edge of a concrete pad under a picnic table. Also found numerous underground sprinkler heads at regular spacings I learned to ignore. In addition, I was occassionally fooled by rebar, especially where the grass had not been edged and had grown over the concrete. All my finds were within 6" of the sidewalk, so the technique should be effective with smaller round heads too, though DD/Widescan may work better since rebar in the sidewalk to the side of a concentirc coil may trigger the MD.

Glad we were of help. It kinda gets the day off to agood start doing this. Nice finds.